Previous conversations on imessage disappeared on my mac?

I have been using imessage on my laptop, ipad and iphone for months and they were all working fine. However today, I was unable to send any messages on my mac but still could do so on my ipad and iphone. After resigning into my account and restarting my computer, i could receive and send messages again and they all sync to all three of my products. However, the previous messages on my laptop have disappeared. All that I have left are the most recent messages that I've sent to one person. The messages between me and other contacts have disappeared as well. Can I easily recover these messages?

You can only restore the whole message database, not individual messages or conversations. This procedure will replace the database with an earlier version, so you'll lose all later changes.
Sign out of iMessage and all other IM accounts, if any. Quit Messages. Hold down the option key and select
          Go ▹ Library
from the Finder menu bar. A folder window will open.
Restore the subfolder named "Messages" from a backup that predates the unwanted changes, then log out and log back in.
If you're running OS X 10.9 or later, delete the subfolder Containers/com.apple.iChat.
If you don't have a backup, the archive can't be restored.

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